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Fair Work Australia’s performance against benchmarks to be made public

FAIR Work Australia president Justice Iain Ross will shortly publish the tribunal’s performance against timeliness benchmarks set earlier this year, he told a Senate Estimates hearing on October 17.

Steps that the president has taken to improve the tribunal’s efficiency and accountability since previous Estimates hearings in May 2012 include introducing a member conduct guide as well as timeliness benchmarks for delivering reserve decisions.

The timeliness benchmarks specify that:

  • 90 per cent of reserve decisions are to be delivered within eight weeks;
  • 100 per cent of reserve decisions are to be delivered within 12 weeks;
  • 50 per cent of agreement approval applications are to be dealt with in three weeks;
  • 90 per cent of agreement approval applications are to be dealt with in eight weeks; and
  • 100 per cent of agreement approval applications are to be dealt with in 12 weeks.

The benchmarks were introduced on 1 July 2012 and, according to Justice Ross, there has since been significant improvement in the tribunal’s performance in key areas since then.

The tribunal’s performance against the indicators will be published on the Fair Work Australia website in early November and updated monthly.

“The timeliness benchmarks are intended to be challenging, and to that extent they are aspirational,” Justice Ross told the Senate Estimates committee.

“I expect that there will be individual instances where the tribunal does not meet its own high standards, for a variety of reasons, but I think that the setting of performance benchmarks and then publicly reporting our performance against them are important accountability measures, and I wanted to bring those to the attention of the committee.”

To view the full Senate Estimates Hansard, click here.

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